


supernovas in your eyes

by Astrals (Evoxine)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Declarations Of Love, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-07-06 09:17:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15883107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evoxine/pseuds/Astrals
Summary: They've been in space for years – Keith is adamant that no galaxy shines brighter than Shiro does.His Galran heritage seems to agree, and so Keith finds himself sneezing every time he thinks of a certain bright-eyed someone.





	supernovas in your eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry in advance, Keith~

Of _course_ it’s a Galran thing.

It all started back in the Quantum Abyss, halfway into their journey. Huddled around a campfire with Kosmo draped across Keith’s feet, Krolia asked him one simple question that set it off.

“Who took care of you after your father passed?”

“Shiro,” he replied immediately. Heat flared along the arcs of his cheeks and the tips of his ears, but Keith didn’t have any time to deal with the embarrassment before a celestial body crossed the horizon and sent them into one of his own memories.

_Speeding across the desert, just the pair of them and the battering of air against their bodies. Above, the sun is just beginning to set, a glowing blood orange hanging in the sky, gilding clouds with streaks of gold and coral. Keith drinks in the look of unrestrained exhilaration of Shiro’s face and watches with a sliver of fear in his throat as Shiro dives off the side of a cliff. Taking the leap himself, joining Shiro on a flat ledge and standing next to the man who makes his heart beat double time. Shiro looks at him, fond and proud, and something bubbles in Keith’s blood._

Right after they’re pulled back to the present, Keith let out a sneeze.

After that day, whenever Keith thought of Shiro, he’d sneeze. When Krolia finally explained the reason behind the sneezing, Keith sneezed again. The revelation settled over him like a warm, heavy quilt. Krolia simply smiled at him.

“I’m happy for you,” she said.

 

 

 

  
The pod trembles beneath his fist, short vibrations that send jolts of desperation shooting up Keith’s nerves. Shiro is _right there_ , skin sallow and lips dry. There’s a faint furrow between his brows, and Keith just wants to press his thumb to the creased skin and smooth it out.

“Shiro, please. Fight! You can’t do this to me again.”

When Shiro’s eyes flutter open and Keith is able to lay eyes on those stormy irises that have only ever brought him calm and stability, he sneezes.

“Keith,” Shiro whispers hoarsely. “You saved me.”

“We saved each other,” Keith mumbles, then gathers Shiro into his arms. He buries his nose into the unmarred skin of Shiro’s neck and inhales. He sneezes again.

“Are you sick?” Shiro asks, voice flooded with concern.

Keith can’t help but laugh. He’s not the one who’s just narrowly avoided death – again –, not the one who lost his body, not the one who had his consciousness trapped in an astral plane for years. He’s not the one Shiro should be worried about, and yet here they are.

“I’m not sick,” he replies, and holds Shiro impossibly closer.

Somehow, through the hard plates of their amour, Keith can feel the steady beat of Shiro’s heart. His eyes prickle, and he barely manages to swallow the sudden gasp of panic that bubbles up in his throat. _He’d nearly lost Shiro._ That realisation slows the rushing of his blood down to a crawl and blurs his vision with unshed tears. His ears are ringing, lips trembling, and the world only rights itself when Keith sneezes yet again.

“Are you _sure_ you’re not sick,” he hears Shiro ask. He simply shakes his head and exhales.

 

 

 

  
Easy chatter and the warmth of firelight lulls Keith into a doze. They’re waiting for their Lions to recharge, and the other Paladins have taken it upon themselves to teach the Alteans how to play charades.

Keith is roused when he feels a gentle touch against his cheek.

“Sorry,” Shiro hurries to say, pulling his hand away. “You, um, can go back to sleep.”

“I wasn’t sleeping,” Keith says thickly, scrubbing the grogginess out of his eyes. “Why aren’t you playing with them?”

“Hard to play charades with one arm,” Shiro laughs. He reaches over to scratch Kosmo’s exposed belly. Keith watches him, marvels silently at the sheer amount of life inside the man’s large frame. It threatens to overflow. When Shiro coos at Kosmo, Keith sneezes.

Shiro’s gaze immediately flicks to him.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, probably just dust or something.”

Across the fire, their friends are shrieking with laughter. Keith spares them another few seconds of his attention before turning back to Shiro. It’s an instinctive decision, giving Shiro his full attention, and Keith surmises that it’s always been this way ever since Shiro came into his life. In all likelihood, he would be at a standstill if it wasn’t for Shiro – without him pulling Keith along, Keith would be stuck, motionless.

He sneezes. Kosmo’s tail twitches.

“Keith,” Shiro begins, eyes fixated on how Kosmo’s fur flows between his fingers. “I want to apologise.”

The moment Shiro straightens, Keith opens his mouth and says, “Shiro, you have nothing to apologise for.”

The edges of Shiro’s mouth seizes.

“But I hurt you,” Shiro says, “I hurt –” He pauses, eyes wide, lungs expanded beneath the shutters of his rib cage. There’s cotton in Keith’s mouth, and he tries to wet his lips, but everything is dry.

“I hurt _you_ ,” Shiro finishes, sounding horrified. Kosmo teleports away in a flash of white.

Keith pushes off the rock behind him and drops to his knees.

“Hey,” he says, cradling Shiro’s face between his palms. “You didn’t hurt me. You would never hurt me.” He traces the faint shadows beneath Shiro’s eyes with his thumbs. Terror paints the inside of Keith’s heart in a coat of black when he sees doubt in Shiro’s eyes.

His breath hitches when Shiro brushes the back of his knuckles over the scar on his cheek.

“Krolia told me once,” Keith whispers, bringing their faces closer together until their foreheads bump. “That scars were marks left by death when it failed to claim you. It’s proof that we’re stronger, that we’ve defeated death even when it had us in its clutches.”

Shiro’s eyelashes tremble as they sweep down.

“You didn’t hurt me,” Keith repeats. “You _heard_ me. That split second gave me the chance to save us both.”

Keith traces the edge of Shiro’s scar. “Besides, now we match.”

At the sound of Shiro’s watery laugh, Keith sneezes.

 

 

 

  
His mother holds him tight, calming fingers carding through his hair. His helmet lies on the pilot’s seat, and Keith can feel Black’s presence in his mind, harried but relieved.

“Thank goodness you’re alright,” Krolia says, words half-muffled from where her lips are against the crown of his head. Keith exhales against her chest.

His breathing is just returning to normal when a brightness lights up the inside of Black’s cockpit, fading away to reveal an agitated Shiro. Krolia steps away, rests a hand on Kosmo’s head, and the pair of them disappears in yet another flash.

Keith, speechless, is yanked into Shiro’s personal space, where he spends several minutes letting the man check him over for injuries. Black purrs contentedly, and Keith momentarily wonders if Shiro can hear her, too.

“Shiro,” he finally says, resting a hand over Shiro’s from where his fingers are digging into Keith’s hipbone. “I’m okay. I’m unharmed.”

“You really scared me. I would never forgive myself if something happened to you and I couldn't save you.”

When Keith sneezes, Shiro jumps a mile into the air.

“You’re an idiot,” he says fondly. Shiro looks at him, confused, but Keith just smiles instead.

 

 

 

  
He finds Shiro on the rooftop, a knee drawn to his chest and weight resting on his human arm, extended behind him. Shiro reaches up to the sky with his new prosthetic, the fingers curling almost lazily in front of the stars.

Keith clears his throat. At the sound, Shiro turns to look over his shoulder.

“Keith.” Shiro sounds surprised.

“Are you okay?” Keith asks, settling down next to him. Throughout the meeting, Keith had noticed the lines of tension etched along Shiro’s eyes and the tightness of his jaw. He’d done well in hiding the grief, but Keith knows him well enough to see through the façade.

Shiro hesitates, dropping his arm and resting it on the crest of his knee.

“No,” he says slowly. “I don’t think so.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

While Shiro mulls over the offer, Keith gazes out at the vast expanse of the desert. The orange glow of the particle barrier almost masks the quiet beauty of the night sky, but the stars always manage to make it through. They glimmer, soft and steady, unlike diamonds scattered across black velvet that scream _look at me_. Stars are rarely on people’s minds, but Keith never fails to appreciate them. After all, they remind him of someone.

Keith’s sneeze seems to shake Shiro out of his reverie.

“I never got to say goodbye to him.” Shiro’s voice splits, his head hangs, and silver spills across the sharp edge of his scar. “Not before I left for the Kerberos mission, and not before he died.”

“Say it now,” Keith whispers, still looking out over the desert. When he feels Shiro’s eyes on him, he gestures up at the sky. “Say goodbye and let the stars carry it to him.”

Shiro is silent. When Keith finally glances over, he feels air rush out of his lungs at the sight of unshed tears in Shiro’s eyes. They’re fixated on the stars, and Keith suddenly feels like he’s intruding. He stands and makes to leave, but Shiro wraps warm fingers around the exposed flesh of his ankle and Keith stops in his tracks.

“Please don’t leave,” Shiro says.

For a few breaths, Keith feels as though everything has stuttered to a halt. Like a car with a dead battery and no cables to jumpstart it with.

But then Shiro says a soft, “Keith,” and Keith jerks back into life with another sneeze.

“Of course,” he says, reclaiming his recently vacated spot. Shiro lets go of him, and Keith immediately misses his touch.

 

 

 

  
When Keith finally finds enough energy to open his eyes, he’s more than surprised to see Kolivan sitting by the window, posing like a model. Krolia’s polishing her blade, but she picks up on the change in Keith’s breathing and glances over just as Keith opens his mouth.

He drains a cup of water in seconds.

“Just in time for Shiro’s speech,” Krolia says, pointing at the screen hanging up on the wall. The second Keith’s eyes land on Shiro standing behind the podium, looking exquisitely handsome in his uniform, he sneezes.

Kolivan snorts so hard it sends a flush shooting up Keith’s neck. Krolia tries, but fails spectacularly, to hide her smile.

At the end of the speech, Keith’s close to falling asleep again. Krolia soothes him, a hand sweeping his hair out of his eyes, and tells him that Shiro will try to visit him soon.

As it turns out, being the Captain of the Atlas keeps Shiro a very busy man. By the time Keith is up and about, Shiro still hasn’t been in to see him – at least not while Keith is awake, according to the nurses. So Keith decides to take matters into his own hands.

He finds Lance, and Lance easily convinces Veronica to drive him to wherever Shiro is. It’s a two-hour drive, and Keith spends the entire time sneezing. Thankfully, he manages to convince Veronica that he’s allergic to the air after all these years away from Earth. When the vehicle slows to a stop, Keith’s nose is bright red.

Shiro’s standing on a raised platform, Matt by his side as they look over some paperwork. Around them, Garrison cadets and allied aliens are hard at work while Black sits regally in the distance. There’s a lot of Earth left to rebuild, and Keith can only imagine how busy Shiro is. But there’s an itch that needs to be scratched, and Keith has been waiting for _far_ too long.

“Shiro!” The name tumbles out of his mouth as soon as he’s got one leg out of the car.

A lock of white curls up with the wind when Shiro turns around, those warm, gunmetal eyes wide with pleasant surprise. He laughs, the happiest sound, and _god_ , does Keith love him.

“Keith!”

Keith jogs over, steps not faltering despite the sneeze that rattles his body.

“Hi.” Once they’re within arm’s reach of each other, Keith can’t help but smile. He basks in the sight of Shiro, healthy and capable and beautiful – he sneezes again.

“Keith,” Shiro says, hand flying up to rest against Keith’s forehead. “Are you sure you’ve recovered? You’ve been sneezing for a really long time, maybe you should get another check-up, see what’s causing it? Maybe it’s allergies –”

Keith shakes his head. “I’m not allergic to anything.” Before Shiro can reply, Keith encircles Shiro’s wrist with his fingers and tugs. “Can I talk to you for a bit?”

They end up standing beneath Black’s chest. Keith thinks it’s appropriate.

“It’s a Galra thing,” he explains. “The sneezing.”

Shiro frowns, adorably confused. “But your mother doesn’t sneeze.”

“Galrans sneeze when they think of the person they’re in love with.” He pauses. “I sneeze when I think of you.”

Predictably, Shiro turns into a bumbling, blushing mess. Keith still has his hand around Shiro’s wrist, and he can feel the pattering of Shiro’s pulse against his fingers.

“How do you, um, stop the sneezing?”

“I love you, Shiro.” Keith waits for a second or two, then grins. “There. No sneeze.”

“Oh,” Shiro utters, his blush deepening.

Keith sobers up. “I just wanted to tell you. I couldn’t pick the right time, but I guess any time was the right one, considering how much we’ve been through together. Sometimes, I lie in bed at night and I can’t fall asleep from all the sneezing, because I love _everything_ about you and it’s impossible to stop thinking about you.”

He has so much more he wants to say, but Shiro stops him with a horribly executed fake sneeze. Keith stares at him, a tad nonplussed.

Shiro ducks his head – his ears are practically on fire.

“That was supposed to be a sneeze,” Shiro mumbles. “Because, you know, the love thing. So um, I sneezed.”

Is he saying what Keith thinks he’s saying?

“Shiro..?”

“If I were Galran, I would’ve gone through years of sneezing.”

Shiro finally looks up at him, thumb reaching up to swipe over the swell of Keith’s bottom lip.

“I love you too, Keith. You’re everything to me.”

Keith wants to let out a bark of joyous laughter, but he also really wants to kiss Shiro. So he does both, letting Shiro drink in his laugh when their lips touch. Shiro’s prosthetic cradles the base of Keith’s skull while the fingers of his human hand splay across the small of his back – Keith licks into Shiro’s mouth, a little shy, and Shiro reciprocates with a nibble to his lip.

When they part, Keith sneezes.

“Okay,” Keith says with a sniffle and another laugh. “That was _actually_ dust. Or something.”

Shiro smiles and kisses him again. 

**Author's Note:**

> Shiro is terribly prone to blushing, everyone and their mothers know it.   
> Also, I hope some people got the hurt/heard thing – they sound alike, at least to me?
> 
> [Click for Links!](https://bluedveins.wixsite.com/evoxine)   
> Follow me on twitter @ sheiganes_


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